


Real Live Wire

by Veneredirimmel (Smilla)



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Gen, Imprisonment, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicide Attempt, Swearing, post-series 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21512212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Veneredirimmel
Summary: It was a very nice spring day, very nice. Blue in the sky, striped with the bars from the gate from where he was looking at; stark against it the two sculptures at the sides had features twisted with pain and bald heads and empty holes where the eyes should have been. He stood there looking at them, head up in the sky, and wished he was somewhere else. In a different fucking life, where his kid brother was not inside a fucking asylum. And he had not been the one who’d put him there.
Relationships: Arthur Shelby & Tommy Shelby
Comments: 33
Kudos: 79
Collections: Peaky Blinders Exchange Round Two: Season 5 Edition





	Real Live Wire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [turquoisetumult](https://archiveofourown.org/users/turquoisetumult/gifts).



> Written for Turquoisetumult's prompt that requested an exploration of Arthur and Tommy's intense relationship.  
> I really, really hope you enjoy it, I certainly enjoyed writing it, so thanks for the chance. ♥
> 
> Title borrowed from _Psycho Killer_ , by Talking Heads

The bullet goes boom with the softest press on the trigger, the sound of it muffled into nothing by the heavy fog, by the loud noise in his head. It’s so soft, she says, so easy, such a small change. Over and over and over, until it morphs into a raging storm. Tommy only wants her to go away.

A small change. Things might change, he’d said, and it’s ended being a death-bed wish. 

May you be in heaven-

This changes nothing. This pressed trigger, this fired bullet. There might blood somewhere, flowing between his head and her gentle, cold hand, but the world keeps on swirling around him like in one of Charlie’s toys, images after images, back-lit by a lamp. So many faces. Who? _Who_

He screamed.

Such a small change, she’d said. But the difference between dead and alive has always evaded him, and he’s left with hands full of pain, a crescendo of it that mercifully takes him away.

Later.

A voice. 

Arthur. Sounds like Arthur but Tommy can’t see his face. It’s already pretty dark outside, he tells Frances, and he wishes darkness would get to him. Then it does.

__________

_Next time, use a gun, man._

He did, he fucking did. Tommy had used one himself and Arthur had only been able to shove it away from blowing his brain off, but not enough not to let the bullet stray, not enough not to cover his own hands and Tommy’s face in of blood. And he screamed. He screamed so loud he covered Tommy’s anguished one. He never wanted to hear that scream again. It was stuck forever in his memory. 

They both fell on the ground, and Arthur used his bigger size to stop Tommy’s thrashing, held his arm by his side, locked his wrist against his back, twisted his legs around Tommy’s until he became too weak to fight Arthur’s hold, and he only twitched. 

_You’re scaring me, Tom. Stop, please. Please, Tom._

Of all the times he’d begged Tommy to do something, this one time Tommy had listened, and he finally stopped, still like an empty, blown up shell.

__________

At the gate, they asked his name. Arthur’d been prepared for everything, thinking things through, all his moves up to a fake name, and a fake address, a fake reason for being there if they ask him. And all the while, he came up with his plan, he’d realized he was thinking like Tom, evaluating possibilities, having a plan, calculating odds. He was sweating, despite the chilly air.

He hated London with a violent blind fury he couldn’t explain. Always had.

They left him waiting for a long time outside, and he stood under the iron gate and looked up. It was a very nice spring day, very nice. Blue in the sky, striped with the bars from the gate from where he was looking at; stark against it the two sculptures at the sides had features twisted with pain and bald heads and empty holes where the eyes should have been. He stood there looking at them, head up in the sky, and wished he was somewhere else. In a different fucking life, where his kid brother was not inside a fucking Asylum. And he had not been the one who’d put him there.

__________

Arthur’s wish that Tommy would stop screaming had been a curse. He finally laid there, on the cold soft mud, listless and still eyes open and blank, mouth slack, bleeding from the ragged wound on his temple, a flow that wouldn’t stop no matter how much Arthur pressed on it with his white handkerchief, now fully red. So Arthur did the next best thing he could think of, he carried Tommy inside, trying to avoid thinking how much easier this was for him, how much this reminded him of the trenches and countless wounded comrades he’d carried like this - never his brother, though, never. He’d looked invincible on the fields, even shot and wounded - and then it was too late, and halfway back to Arrow House, he ducked down under an imaginary shell as it fell and exploded on impact. He laughed then and his face was wet and they both were covered in a dark sludge of wet mud, and Tommy would not say a word.

Finally home he shouted at Frances to fucking come here and help him. She came immediately, and her surprise and worry had been betrayed only by a small narrowing of her brow, before she composed herself and started barking orders, and calling more maids, and he and the gardener took Tommy upstairs to one of the bedrooms and stripped him of his bloody and muddy clothes and put him, naked and bleeding, on stark white linens.

__________

The orderly was a big man, with large shoulders and meaty forearms exposed by rolled-up shirtsleeves. He walked him from the main entrance hall through a small wooden door and downstairs that twisted and turned and disoriented him. He never said a word along the way and left Arthur in a small empty room with a muttered command to wait there. The room was dim-lit like the old house in Watery Lane used to be. Two petrol lamps on the wall and a lone electric bulb didn’t provide enough light to avoid making it look like the cave it was. Two doors, one metallic with what looked like a heavy lock, a smaller ordinary one on the opposite side, through which another orderly came through a few moments later.

He searched him, took away his flask and his bow tie, the laces on his shoes, he had not brought any weapon so he didn’t find anything else to take away. His stack of cash was put right back in his pocket with a long lingering look. The orderly didn’t say why he’d taken away his things, didn’t say a single word at all, making the silence heavy and unbearable. Arthur held his breath when the metallic door opened with a whiny, rusted noise.

__________

Frances ushered him out of the room and took charge of the situation, and Arthur didn’t protest, didn’t ask to be left inside those closed doors, glad that someone else was taking things out of his hands. Then a doctor had been called, and the rest of the family - Ada, and Polly, and someone had been sent to Birmingham to bring Lizzie and the children back home from their violin concert.

The enormity of everything that had happened hit Arthur full force. He’d have to tell Pol about Aberama Gold’s murder, the rest of the family about the failed assassination attempt, they’d have questions he didn’t have answers to, and above all, the weight of what his brother had done in that field was lodged like a sack of bricks on Arthur’s chest, making it hard to breathe, making him sick. 

He found refuge inside Tommy’s study after he’d taken the worst of the mud and blood out of his clothes and hands, but it felt wrong sitting at Tommy’s desk so he sat at the long table instead, caressing the smooth shiny surface, drinking Tommy’s fine Irish whiskey and wishing Tommy would be bloody awake for the time when explanations were due, so he could make as this never happened - forget it all. 

Just a bad, day, eh Tommy? let’s go back to the Garrison and drink to this fucking nightmare, _See, not even a gun is enough to take down a fucking Shelby._

You were wrong, brother, Arthur would have a joke ready, and Tommy maybe would smile, like he never did anymore.

__________

The metallic door, Arthur realized, had kept away the noises coming from behind it. He walked behind the orderly through a straight corridor lined with numbered metallic doors at each side that ended in a larger space with a table and a nurse sitting behind it. Arthur’s skin crawled and a shiver came down his spine: whiny laments and anguished shouts came from behind those closed, doors, some low and rumbling, some high-pitched, pleas and prayers, and to Arthur it felt like the very gates of hell had been laid open, and he was walking through it with his tailored suit and fine-leather shoes with no laces.

The nurse had a stack of folders in front of him and a huge metallic cabinet filled with meds and vials and other medical paraphernalia was open behind him. In the other corner, two low wheeled carts had been put against the wall.

“We were not expecting visitors for Mr Davis,” the nurse told Arthur. “We had to sedate him in preparation for it.”

Arthur shivered. “Right, yeah, right,” he said. And only then he noticed three bloody furrows on the back of the nurse’s hand, definitely caused by nails, angry red and fresh enough to have happened very recently. The guy’s knuckles were red, too, the thin skin broken over the bones. Arthur knew what that meant.

“You may see why Mr Davis needs sedation. But don't worry, he's tame as a kitten, now.” The nurse smirked when he saw where Arthur was watching, and the other one laughed at some private fucking joke and it didn’t seem funny to Arthur, no, it didn’t seem funny at all. Arthur wished his cap was lined with razors, like in the good old times, and he’d slash a new, larger smile on both these fuckers’ faces.

“Hard nut to crack, your friend. Wild little thing.”

“He’s not, he’s-- he’s not my friend,” Arthur said. 

_He’s my brother. He’s my fucking kid brother._

__________

When the doctor had been done with Tommy, he asked to talk to someone from the family and Arthur was still the only bloody family around so he had him brought to Tommy’s study. He rejoiced when the doctor had said that the bullet had only been a scratch, right, it hadn’t even broken bone, although the bruising it left around the wound and his eyes would be scary to look at in the next days. Bar any infection setting, Mr Shelby’d be as good as new in a few days. It felt good news, right good news, so Arthur sprang to his feet and poured one for the good doctor and looked at him as he swallowed all at once before he came crashing down with the very, very bad news.

He wished Polly was there, or Ada. _Linda_. But that thought he had forbidden to himself, so he stopped it right before it could overcome anything else. He sat to wait instead, completely unprepared as to what to do or even say, and he knew, he knew right that moment that his brother’s entire life and future had been put in his hands and he could not mess this up. He could not mess this up.

He sniffed a line of snow, a thin line, just a bit to give himself a boost, to drive away from the cold and the pain. _For races only,_ he told the empty room and he felt the hollow promise in it.

He sat back at the long table and waited for the rest of his family to arrive.

__________

They told him the rules. The first one being he could not go inside his brother’s room alone. Arthur was expecting that. He’d been prepared for it, and if he had not, the pointed look from the orderly to the pocket where he’d put his money in would have been enough to let even him know what to do. He was generous enough and got half an hour visit allowance on top of the regular half. They also told him no touching was allowed.

“He doesn’t like to be touched, this one. He bites like a mad horse” 

The nurse with the cracked knuckles took a big ring of keys and chose one. “This way.”

They walked along a different corridor than the one he’d come from, took the left where he forked and stopped in front of the fourth door with the number 17 on it. The nurse opened it and moved aside. Arthur took his cap off and rolled it and put it inside the pocket of his coat, then took a deep breath and stepped inside the gloom and the smell of body sweat and other body things Arthur didn’t want to think about. The door closed behind his back with a loud bang and clank of keys turning inside the lock. Finally, there he was, Tommy, his brother, laying on a bed, facing the wall, back to the door, covered up to his waist in a thin blanket that couldn’t do much against the cold in his bloody tomb. There was a chair beside the bed, bolted to the ground, like the bed and the bedside stand were, and light came from high above on the ceiling but wasn’t enough to reveal what lay in the corners.

It took Arthur two tries, his throat was so dry, but finally, he said it. 

“I’m sorry, Tommy.”

__________

Arthur wanted to throw Michael out as soon as he saw him. He knew he had no place in Tommy’s house, listening to what Arthur had to say about his brother, but a look at Pol and he said nothing, only baring his teeth in welcome. He wondered briefly why she’d brought him with her, felt something was escaping him, strategies he probably would never understand - and wasn’t that the whole bloody joke of his whole bloody life?

 _I think, Arthur. I think so you don’t have to._

Then, bloody come here and do the bloody thinking Tommy. _Please._

Ada went upstairs to Tommy’s room as soon as she’d arrived and so did Lizzie, leaving Charles and Ruby in Frances’s hands. 

They’d been there for what had seemed to Arthur a long time, each minute passing a reminder that, damn, at least someone had cared enough to do that because it was not like Arthur had the courage to go himself and look in on his brother. And what did that say about him?

He sat in his chosen spot, instead, picking mud and blood from under his nails, while Michael snorted snow on Tommy’s table, and poured whiskey from his crystal bottle like it was his fucking place. Then Lizzie and Ada joined them, a look of dread on both their faces. 

“What happened, Arthur?” Polly asked.

Arthur stood up, felt like he had to stand up for this. 

“Aberama Gold is dead.”

Ada and Lizzie gasped. Polly went still, and at that moment she reminded him so much of Tommy, Arthur wanted to shout and scream and cry. He stood straight and tall, silent until she’d absorbed the news. The clock ticked in the silence. Michael broke it first.

“How?”

“Not your fucking business.”

Michael stood up himself, and both Ada and Lizzie looked lost and ill-at-ease, conscious that they were missing something. 

“SIt down, Michael.” Polly’s voice carried a small tremor, but nothing more than that. 

“What about Tommy?” she asked.

Arthur fell back in his chair, looked straight at Michael. “Not in front of him.”

__________

It had been a year and a half. A fucking year and a half and Arthur had never come, never visited. No one of them did, not even Ada, who trusted the reports from the doctor who had hospitalized Tommy and had him in his care. _It’s the best place he can be now, Arthur,_ she said over and over whenever Arthur asked, always tearing up at the end like she knew it was a lie until Arthur stopped asking and Ada had stopped lying. Arthur'd tried to kill himself once, had the mark s of the rope to show for it, but Tommy hadn't sent him in the nut-house. A year and a half Arthur had never spent a single day of not regretting his decision, feeling the pangs of guilt like physical wounds, killing them with all the booze and drugs he could buy with his generous yearly Shelby Company allowance. Not that it did any good.

Three months before, right after Christmas, someone had knocked on his door at five in the fucking morning and he’d tumbled downstairs, gun in hand, ready for a quarrel, for a fight, wanting the sweet abandon of violence so bad he could feel it crawling in his hands. So he’d opened the door in his undershirt, head pounding with a hangover he could barely see the face of the man who was on the other side.

His words had frozen him to the core. “I come from London. I work at Bedlam Asylum.”

So here he was, at his brother’s bedside, staring at his brother’s back. 

He could see the knobs of his spine poking through the fabric of the straight-jacket. Never had been a built man, his brother, but he looked small, now. His hair was shorn short, almost bald like the statues at the gate, a badly done job that left the skin of his skull exposed to the cold air in uneven patches. Some scabbing showed where the scissors had slipped and cut skin. He looked completely unaware that Arthur was inside the room. And yet, Arthur knew, from a lifetime of sleeping in the same room, he was awake by how rigid he was under the blanket. 

“Tommy, turn around,” he begged.

__________

It took them long enough to send Michael out of the room, but Arthur would not relent. He made a sign to Ada that he’d explain later, hoping she’d get it, and she must have because she took his side, with Lizzie following suit. Polly was weirdly silent in all the ruckus, but her gaze never left Arthur, like she could read his secrets by staring at him. And she could. Arthur knew she could. He’d decided, sometime during his long wait in Tommy’s study, that he would not tell what had happened in the field, but now he felt exposed and raw under Polly’s fixed gaze and wondered if he could attempt to hide something from her.

When Michael had gone, he sat again, realized bitterly Tommy might have been more suited to explain what the hell had gone down at Mosley’s convention especially to the female side of the family. Something Arthur had never been good at, speaking to women in a way that didn’t make him feel out of his depth and awkward. Everything complicated by not knowing how much each of them knew about Tommy’s plans and what he wanted to do. 

“Someone betrayed Tommy, betrayed… us. Someone who knew everything. Mosley, you, hm, you probably know already, is still alive. Barney Thomason is dead, and, you know, Aberama. They came for me too, couldn’t see who it was. We went away fast as we could, after. And Tom-”

Tom’d gone crazy, lost his fucking mind, but he couldn’t say that, could he? He didn’t meet Polly’s eyes.

“We drove back and Tommy was, hm, he was upset, so he went for a walk, you know how he likes walking. He loves that, Tommy. Walking alone. To clear his head, he said. And he needed that and I let him-

“He said he needed to walk. In the field, he went into the field, and I let him-”

His throat clamped up like a virgin's legs. He’d let him go. He’d seen how out of it he’d been but he’d let him go alone and armed, to try fucking kill himself.

“Arthur, what happened?” 

He deflated at Polly’s command, how had he thought he could keep this secret he didn’t know. As if his brother wasn’t lying awake but not really awake in a room upstairs. That’s what the doctor had said, right? He’s like he’s here but he’s not, which made no sense if you asked Arthur and yet, it was exactly where his brother was. Here, but gone. 

“Tommy fucking tried to kill himself.”

__________

Arthur had expected many things, he’d sat awake at night for the months it took him to come up with the plan and put everything together, imagining horrors upon horrors. What the Bedlam’s employee - a certain Edmond Sinclair whose family used to live in Bordesley - had told him was enough to turn his dreams bad for years to come. “Why did you come?” he’d asked him right before he was leaving.

The man had squeezed his hat in his hands. “Mr Shelby, I mean - you know, Mr Davis - he’s been good to me and my family. When my son’s hours were cut, he found him better employment. And he dealt with that bastard of my sister’s husband, she said. That’s what she said and after Mr Shelby got involved, he never laid a hand on her anymore.”

The haunting look on his face had tormented Arthur even more than his tales would in the months to come. “I know what people say about your brother, Mr Shelby, but he’s been good to me and he’s been good to my family and he-- I don’t think he deserves what’s happening to him.” Then he’d turned around and walked away briskly in the snow-swept pathway.

Nothing he could imagine, though, had prepared Arthur for seeing Tommy right at that moment. He would be hard-pressed to find anything about his brother in the creature on the bed. Skinny beyond what would make a body survive, the skin on his face grey-white, cheekbones prominent, his lips dry and frayed, bleeding in spots. 

The straight jacket forced Tommy to use his back and shoulders in a clumsy, painful attempt at turning around. Some bruises were visible under the collar, angry black spots, livid in the limited glow of the overhead lamp. It was enough to shock Arthur back from his stupor.

“Let me help-” 

“No.”

Tommy’s voice was barely a whisper, so cracked it must have hurt getting it out, but it carried the command Arthur had always answered to in spite of himself, the note that made him straighten his spine without even thinking. And that was him, his brother, purely Tommy.

He stepped back, arms at his sides, while Tommy slowly found a semi-sitting position lodged between the bed and the wall. Tommy’s breath came short and loud because of the exertion, like after a long run up a hill, so Arthur sat back and waited him out, taking in every detail: from the striped bottoms of his pyjamas to the elaborates knots that confined his arms in a crossed fashion. The light didn’t reach Tommy’s eyes, made them two cavernous holes Arthur couldn’t read. 

He sat there in silence, past after his breath had evened out. He sat and he didn’t speak and he stared at Arthur for such a long time, Arthur started to question his coming. Maybe, , Ada had been right in her faithful trust in the medical care Tommy was receiving. Maybe. Or maybe, Arthur was more stupid than he’d ever thought. No one could get better living like a rat in a small, windowless room, tied to a bed, without the use of his arms. No fresh air. No, light. No fucking air.

 _Jesus_ Arthur’d sent his brother back into a tunnel.

Tommy’s voice when he spoke, startled him. 

“Took you long enough, brother.”

__________

They waited because that’s what the doctor had said to do. Just wait, it could go back, same way it’d come. Time may be all that Mr Shelby needs.

Frances had banned all the maids from entering Tommy’s room, and when Charles asked to see his father, it was Arthur who had to tell him that that was not possible. An excuse was concocted about Tom being indisposed for when inevitably people would come asking, or when the phone would start ringing. By midday the next day, nothing had changed. 

Polly went away, then, on some business, she’d said. 

She’d gone up to Tommy’s room at some point in the morning, came down almost immediately and then stared at the fire for in silence before she’d announced she was going away for the time being and to call her if there was any change. Arthur had seen her clumsy attempt at wiping tears from the corner of her eyes, but he’d not liked the look on her face as she’d gone. Like she’d decided on something that was tearing her apart. He’d not liked it at all. 

Hours passed and nothing changed and the whole house was sombre with it as if the walls and the paintings and the dark mahogany furniture were as sad as Arthur felt. He’d never liked Arrow House, too big he always got confused, lost. In the afternoon, his fidgeting had gone on Ada’s nerves and he decided to take a walk to the chapel on the edge of Tommy’s propriety. He’d never been here since Tommy’s wedding - since that night. But this time the cold stare of the saints painted behind the altar didn’t give him any comfort. That had been Linda’s stitch. A nice fantasy Arthur had lost himself in.

When he walked back, Charlie Strong’s car was parked in front of the house and fuck, but he’d forgot, about the money Charlie was to collect during their failed assassination attempt. Like the fool he was, he’d forgot. Tommy wouldn’t have, he wouldn’t have foregone anything, he’d take in on everything with that fucking sharp brain of his. Tommy would know what had to be done. With the money, with whatever Polly was going to do about this whole mess, with fucking Michael. 

Arthur couldn’t even climb the stairs and look at his brother. _Think, you thick bastard, think._

Once inside a look at Charlie Strong was enough to tell him he knew everything, how, he didn’t know, they weren’t going to tell outside the family. But Charlie knew somehow and that’s was something else Arthur didn’t understand. He’d wanted to ask, but he didn’t, scared of what answer he’d get. Why had nobody seen this coming? Why didn’t *he* see it coming? Yeah, right. No time for that anymore. He took Charlie aside and told him to hide the money somewhere safe and keep it quiet about it.

“Take yours and Johnny’s share and hide the rest.” Charlie nodded and went away, and for the first time, Arthur felt like he’d done something smart that Tommy would have approved.

__________

“Sent you a couple of letters, Arthur. You didn’t write back.”

Barely above a whisper, Tommy’s voice, rough, words slurred like he was drunk, it immediately sent him back to panting like an old steam locomotive. Arthur knew, of course. He’d found the letters, together with everything else.

It hadn’t been as hard to find exactly what had happened. Everything had been done in plain sight, counting on the fact that no one would ever look. At Shelby Company, Arthur still had some friends, previous employees that had been there since before Michael took over that were eager to help. Arthur didn’t even have to pay them to get what he needed.

It’d come to Arthur right then exactly how much everyone had been played - he, _he_ , had been played, but the truth was no one of them had wanted to look. That was it, right, that was it. They hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe, they’d believed the lie they’d told anyone else: Thomas Shelby had left with his family for a long vacation, leaving his business on the capable hands of his cousin, Michael Grey. It was a nice fantasy. Nice, yes.

Arthur took the money allowance due to him but didn’t give a fuck about how the Company was doing anymore. He’d learned, a few months before, and way after the fact, that Polly had left her position as Company Treasurer not long after Michael had taken over. He didn’t know why and he hadn’t cared to find out, and by that time he wasn’t speaking either to Polly or Ada - and had no idea where the fuck his brother Finn was. There was no family anymore. 

Sometimes, people at the pub told him stories, often about the women Finn was spending his money on, often about those bloody Americans that walked around like they owned the place, and wouldn’t you believe it? That’s what Tommy said it’d happen. Like a wizard, he’d seen the future. And it happened. It did. _Fuck the Americans._

But Arthur was usually too drunk to remember in the morning. Unwilling to remember anything he was told.

The Company had been Tommy’s dream, to Arthur it meant nothing without any of his brothers. That’s what he’d always wanted. Doing business. Doing his job. With his family. A drink in the pub, after, to wash everything away. He’d looked all his life for something to put the fires away, but it turned out, that’s what did it. Tommy had already given him what cooled his fires.

The Company had been Tommy’s project, and it was the Company that was keeping him prisoner, so it was only fair that it would be through the Company that Arthur would get him free.

The extra half hour he’d paid the nurse was enough to tell Tommy every excruciating detail.

__________

Three days later nothing had changed. Arthur stationed outside Tommy’s door, while Frances and Lizzie changed soiled bedclothes and put water inside his mouth that dribbled on the side of his face like he was some demented, elderly sick man.

The doctor came and went, always with his sombre face always shaking his head. He let him talk to Ada on his way out, there was nothing he’d say that Arthur wanted to know, and nothing he said that Arthur did not know already. He’d seen it. He knew what it was. He didn’t need no big words to understand.

On the battlefields, ten years ago, there had been men who suddenly decided they’d go. Just like that, they’d go, left a void behind where they’d previously been. That’s what Tommy did. Just gone. Strong, unbreakable Tommy. He was gone.

He still had not made himself cross the door into Tommy’s room. 

On the fourth day on nothing changed, Ada closed herself into Tommy’s study saying she needed to make a few calls. Then, when she came out, she looked aged and undone, she hugged Arthur and she wept. Arthur let her sob into his jacket as long as she wanted, glad for her warmth and her nice smell, and he did not know who was holding who, but it didn’t matter. 

When she was done with the crying, she smoothed her hair and her gown, and with a voice Arthur didn’t recognize, she said she’d called a family meeting.

“There are decisions that we need to make, Arthur,” she said.

__________

Tommy did not react to anything Arthur told him, but that wasn’t a surprise. Always a man of few words, it was almost just like old times. As if Arthur was briefing him in Tommy’s office, or the smoky private room at the Garrison. Or out there, in Flander Fields, under a tarp or enemy’s fire. Tommy still and attent, probably working things over in his big brain of his, filling in what Arthur was not saying both for the fast ticking of the time and shame. Like how Shelby Company had sent two fake certificates of death for Thomas Davis’s wife and father and Tommy’s fake identity that was supposed to be the protection of his reputation had become his prison. A destitute man that had no living relatives, an ex-employee that the Company had taken in charge as a charity case out of loyalty for his services and now controlled his destiny.

That was what Arthur had discovered. Three requests for discharge, the last one no more than five months after Tommy’d been interned, more than a year before. Arthur remembered the words, written by some doctor in an official pompous style, big words, yeah, but he got the meaning just fine. It was all there, in black and white, all of Tommy’s progresses, his response to the cure he’d been administered. Positive. Always ending the same way, with the same damning phrase: _The patient has shown a remarkable improvement in his condition and will be given to the care of a family relative._

Tommy had pledged his case and asked to be let out in the care of his family, because that’s what you did, eh? That’s the only thing you could do when your entire bloody family didn’t even care to fucking visit. Three times he’d done that. Three times he’d been denied. The Company had made a big donation to Bedlam Asylum, more money had been slipped into the dirty pockets of a certain Dr. Brooke from London at the same time, each fucking time, and that too was in the folder Arthur had gotten out of the Company archives. Using Tommy’s money to keep Tommy locked inside his worst nightmare. That must have happened shortly before Polly resigned, but Arthur didn’t know how Tommy’s papers had ended in Michael’s hands. He didn’t want to believe that had been the plan all along. Didn’t want to think Polly may have been involved. Or found it and said nothing. 

Arthur had decided then he was going to kill Michael on account of that alone. He’d taken a bullet, carved the name on it. It was going to happen. Stronger than a promise.

The clock was ticking and Tommy wasn’t talking.

“Tom. Tommy-- I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Nobody knew. We-” 

“Fuck you, Arthur-” But whatever he was going to say next was broken by a sudden fit of coughing, wet, and deep inside his chest, a furious hack that battered him from inside and left him wheezing and curling in on himself when it passed, left him bent in half gasping choked breaths in a way Arthur wished he’d never heard.

Tommy was right. Fuck Arthur. Fuck each one of them for letting this happen. For believing the lies they’d told themselves. But fuck Arthur more than them all, because he was the oldest. He was. He was supposed to care for his kid brothers. Protect them. Right. Yeah. He could have stopped all this from happening one hundred times, he could have. Could have cut it on its start, vetoed the decision. It’d been up to him.

__________

Arthur stormed out of Tommy’s study before he started hitting them all, and fuck it that they were women. He could feel it in his hands, the need to pummel, to maim, to cut. He stopped, unsure where to go, still panting, still mad as the devil himself before he climbed the stairs, two at times, up to the room Tommy was being kept in. Blind with fury he stormed inside, stopped dead in his tracks when he found Frances sitting on the bed. She was changing the bandages on the bullet wound on his temple and she too froze, a roll of white gauze in her hand. The bullet Arthur had not been able to stop had left a ragged furrow that went from Tommy’s right eyebrow to his temple. It’d been stitched neatly and with a steady hand, but Arthur knew it would leave a scar.

“Mr Shelby,” Frances said, “would you mind passing me the bottle of iodine?”

Arthur nodded, throat gone dry, heart still pounding like the drums in a Sunday's band. 

She was very gentle as she dabbed the red lotion on Tommy’s wound, mindful of not letting any drop fall in his eyes, smoothing his hair back so they would not get dirty or stained red with iodine. She had kind eyes, Frances, and she was loyal to Tommy, this Arthur knew right at that moment.

When she was done, she put everything in perfect order on the table under the window, fixed Tommy’s bedclothes and blanket, pumped the pillows and turned off all the lights but a dim bedside lamp. She must have heard the shouting coming from the study. Arthur wondered if she also knew why he’d been shouting and if she had opinions she wanted to share because he fucking needed all the help he could get, and Frances looked like someone who would have thrown herself into a fire for Tommy, had he asked. _Tell me, Frances, should I send my brother inside a crazy house?_ Because Arthur didn’t know what to do and right at that moment he hated Tommy for putting him into that spot with a burning passion that scared him.

But Tommy remained gone, unaware of the tempest raging under Arthur’s skin, under his roof the same way he was unaware of Frances’s kind care. 

When Ada came a little bit later, Arthur was almost dozing in the armchair by the fireplace. She lingered on Tommy’s bed, bent down, kissed his cheek then came to stand in front of Arthur.

“I want him to get better, Arthur. At least this will give him a chance.” The flames from the fire made her face terrible, the tears glint like gemstones.

A storm came that night, violent with booming thunder and flashes of lightning. Later, rain, that turned into hail as big as pebbles, battered the panelled-glass windows. Despite the noise, Tommy did not move from his silent, open-eyed stare at the ceiling, gone somewhere so far away, Arthur knew he would never have a chance of reaching him. 

Maybe someone else could take over from there on because it was sure as all the devils in hell he didn’t know what to do. A traitorous thought, he knew that, but it silenced his head.

Arthur sat in the armchair all night until the fire dimmed and all that was left were spent embers.

__________

This time when Arthur offered him help, Tommy didn’t say no, but Arthur didn’t know if he was just too tired to refuse or if something had shifted between them. Whatever it was, Tommy allowed him to put him back into a semi-sitting position. He was all bones, Tommy, and his skin was clammy and hot. Arthur put the back of his hand against his temple and for the first time, he saw the scar from the bullet.

Tommy was staring at him. 

Arthur let his hand fall, down. “You’re burning up, man.”

A laugh, strangled and bitter. He raised an eyebrow.

Arthur looked away. 

“I didn’t know what to do, Tommy. You were-- you were gone, Tom, Ada said her doctor could get you back. It was a chance. Right? What was supposed to do?”

That’s what had sold Arthur, wasn’t it? If he was honest, it was only part of it. But Ada had believed and believing had been the easiest path.

“Well, I’m back, Arthur. Am I not?”

Arthur was sure he’d swept his arm at the bareness of the room had he not been trussed up into a straight-jacket. 

“Underground locked room with no windows. It’s something.”

“Tommy…”

“No, I get it. I do.”

What did he get Arthur didn’t care to know. But he’d have taken an explosion of rage instead of Tommy’s resigned tone. Defeat didn’t suit his brother, resignation didn’t suit him either. He’d always fought, tooth and nails, he’d fought. But maybe that was before, right? Maybe his brother had gone away that fateful day and nothing had been left of him. Dead, even if the bullet had not found Tommy’s intended mark. 

To Arthur sure it’d felt like dying, and all the time since, a hundred times more. He didn’t want to feel like that anymore. 

“You listen to me,“ he said through clenched teeth and he had to ignore the faint flinch he got in response as a game his eyes were pulling on him. It was important he get this out now, it felt his chance to get make it right.

“We fucked up, Tommy. I fucked up. And I know this is not enough, I know it may never be enough, but I’m getting you out of here. This I can do. I’m not as smart as you, Tom, never guessed the odds and chances the way you do. We was played, all of us. Me, Ada, even Polly. _Me_. But I’m here, now, I’m here, okay, and I’m getting you out.”

The orderly chose that moment to hammer on the door. He had five minutes left. He had to hurry up.

“Tomorrow, you’re going to be transferred to a different hospital up in Birmingham. Got a couple of trusted men to spring you out on the road. That’s what I came to tell you, Tommy. That’s why I came.”

Maybe it wasn’t enough, and it wouldn’t wipe his slate clean, or the last year and a half of whatever torment Tommy had lived through, but it was something Arthur could do. He had no plan past it. Needed Tommy for a plan past that, but Tommy’s reaction had not been the one he’d expected. Tommy’s reaction had been more silence, his head bent, his eyes closed. Retreated in on himself, in a corner where the light overhead skimmed past him.

“There’s money, from the opium, the Chinese, remember? Got Uncle Charlie to hide it, in a safe place. It’s a lot of money, Tommy, remember? All there for you. It’s yours. You get it and disappear wherever you want. Get Lizzie and your kids--”

That got Arthur a reaction: a sharp intake of breath that ended on a whiny, broken sound that ended abruptly. _Jesus._

The quality of the silence had changed, became charged with something that Arthur could feel sizzling on his skin.

“No.”

“What? Tom. You’ll die here if you-” Couldn’t even make himself end the sentence. It was a miracle already he’d lasted this long.

“Shh.”

More silence: a long stretch of heavy silence. Then finally, clear enough through the gravel of his voice.

“You get me out, Arthur. But I come back properly. I go back home, take back what is mine."

It sent dread down Arthur’s spine, that tone of voice, cold and furious like a winter’s storm, a ravenous glint in his eyes that spelled troubles. 

“Okay, Tommy. Okay.” He stood up. “I’ll go now, all right? I’ll see you tomorrow. Hold on, Tom. Only one day more. Can you?”

Nothing. Tommy didn’t answer, he’d retreated back into his corner and his silence. Arthur sighed, then pounded on the door to call the orderly back. The noise of the key turning in the lock was loud in the empty room. Just when it was about to open, Tommy called.

“Arthur?”

“Yes, Tom?”

“You’re real, right? Aren't you?”

  
\--

**Author's Note:**

> A disclaimer: my knowledge about the conditions of patients in psychiatric hospitals - asylums - in 1930 is not extensive, but I've tried to stay true to the 'could have been' rule based on my research. There was, in fact, the possibility for patients to plead their cases and show self-awareness about their health condition in order to show improvement. It was one of the ways a patient could be discharged, often in the care of their family. Obviously, if there wasn't foul play, which, was not, of course, Tommy's case.


End file.
